First 50 Doctors Graduate from Einstein Medical College in New York

June 15, 1959

NEW YORK (Jun. 14)

Fifty young men and women received this weekend their doctor of medicine degrees at the first commencement exercises of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. The graduation ceremony was attended by more than 3,000, including many community leaders, educators and physicians of all faiths. The event marked the first time in the more than 300 years of American Jewry that a Jewish sponsored medical school held a graduation.

Highlighting the ceremony was departure from taking by students of the traditional 2,000-year-old Hippocratic Oath. Instead, the students chanted in unison the Declaration of Geneva, a statement of ethics and principle in which genocide is foresworn. They pledged not to use their “medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity” nor to “permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics or social standing to intervene between duty and patient.” The ceremony included the recital of the Prayer of Maimonides.